It’s Thanksgiving evening here in Medan, Indonesia. We had plans to gather with some other ex-pats to share turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, pumpkin pie, and most of the accoutrements we’re used to as Americans for Thanksgiving. My friend Kyle and I secured a turkey in advance. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call him Tom.
Tom looks skeptical, and rightly so. He’s just endured the humiliation of a 10-minute ride with his feet tied together, stuffed into a sack and slung onto the handlebars of a moped, to emerge in this new environment. I don’t know if turkeys have a sense of smell, but if they do, I’m sure he could smell death in the air.
And that scent would not have been inaccurate. In shockingly short time, Tom shuffled off this mortal coil. After a brief bath in boiling water and a ride in a tumbler, he emerged featherless to have his feet lopped off, then his head and neck, and finally his insides removed. All within the span of perhaps 10 minutes. If you’d like to contemplate the fragility of life, watching your future dinner meet its Maker is a good suggestion. If not for the faint of heart.
My friend brined it and today he came over for the final preparations. Today we spatchcocked it – removing the spine and flattening it out so it would cook more quickly. Covering it liberally in butter we stuck it in the oven. I went about making the stuffing (though of course there wasn’t anything to stuff, other than ourselves!). Gena had made a pumpkin pie the night before. The bird was done by about 2:30pm, giving me time to bake the stuffing a bit. Everything was coming together pretty nicely.
Then we started hearing reports.
It has been raining all week. Literally. Non-stop since Monday evening. And today we learned that, for only the second time in the last century, a typhoon had formed in the Malacca Strait and was basically sitting on top of Medan. There wasn’t any wind, but rain was coming and coming and coming. Rivers were rising. Drainage systems were maxed out. And now streets were flooding.
We’re blessed that where we live does not have flooding problems. Apparently it was a pretty shwanky neighborhood when it was built a few decades back. And while it’s no longer the tony zip code it once was, apparently they designed it to withstand flooding pretty well. We heard reports of flooding elsewhere in the city but I didn’t pay it much mind. Until we carried the bird and stuffing and pies out to my buddy’s car for the short ride over to his house, where the festivities would occur.
Our street was flooded. More accurately, our street and the houses on our street – with the exception of our house – were flooded. Across the street the houses were flooded. Literally 20 feet away from us. But we were dry. I mean, we were wet, but not flooded. Still it was very disconcerting to drive off through the floods knowing we weren’t sure if our house was going to be flooded when we got back. But there was nothing else we could do so we went.
The driveway on the right foreground is ours. The flooding literally stops at our driveway on that side, and if you could see behind this photo in the other direction, it would look very similar.
Half the Thanksgiving crew wasn’t able to join us. They couldn’t find a route to us that wasn’t flooded. But we had turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, so the eight of us went ahead and enjoyed a slightly more subdued Thanksgiving. Normally we would have lounged around for a few more hours to enjoy pie and the end of football games or board games. But we decided to head home before it got dark. It was still raining. The waters had risen everywhere, but our house was still dry.
Forecasts are that the rain should break sometime tonight or early tomorrow morning. We’re scheduled to head to the airport tomorrow afternoon to fly to Hanoi, but that’s completely dependent on whether or not the roads are able to drain before then. Worst case, we’ll miss our trip. That would be sad, but not as sad as the many, many, MANY people whose homes have flooded and have lost much or all of their material possessions and face the prospect of a messy clean up when the weather breaks.
Please pray the weather does break and the flood waters recede. Please pray our home remains dry, and that others are able to return to their homes quickly to start putting their lives back in order. Material possessions are just that. Worst thing, we camp out on the second floor of our house and wait for the flood waters to recede. It would be sad and a little scary, but we’ll likely be just fine, one way or the other. Tonight we’ll pick up most of the electrical plugs and other items up off the ground, just in case. I think we’ll be fine. And I know that flood or no flood, God has us in his hands, and your prayers are with us. Thank you.
The Nelson Family Indonesia 